Best Buy retracts its ‘coming soon’ advertisement for the Samsung Gem

With the Samsung Fascinate now available, our eyes turn to the Samsung Gem, an entry-level Android handset slated to land at Verizon Wireless. Little is known about the Gem; we spotted it in the wild at the beginning of August and revealed the first specs for this Android handset. Last week, Best Buy unveiled the handset in its September Mobile Buyer’s Guide and reveled a few more of the salient details including Swype, a 3.2MP camera, GPS, WiFi, 16GB of internal storage and Android 2.1 with TouchWiz 3.0.

Excitement was high following this retail unveiling as the handset was advertised along with the Fascinate as coming soon. Hopes for an imminent launch have been dashed as Best Buy has officially issued an errata for its buyer guide that states:

“On page 9 of the September Best Buy Mobile Buyer’s Guide we advertised the Samsung Gem (SKU 1200581) as Coming Soon. At this time there is no estimated launch date. We apologize for any confusion or inconvenience this may have caused.”

In one fell swoop, the Samsung Gem is no longer coming soon and its launch date is now a mystery. Several sources have spotted the handset in a finished format so let’s hope the Verizon Gem is still on track for a Fall launch. Fingers crossed that this Best Buy retraction was done merely to save face and is not the result of an unforeseen delay. It is always good to look at things with a cup half full attitude, no?